By Associated Press|
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration can deport some people seeking asylum without allowing them to make their case to a federal judge.
The high court’s 7-2 ruling applies to people who are picked up at or near the border and who fail their initial asylum screenings, making them eligible for quick deportation, or expedited removal.
The justices ruled in the case of man who said he fled persecution as a member of Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority, but failed to persuade immigration officials that he faced harm if he returned to Sri Lanka. The man was arrested soon after he slipped across the U.S. border from Mexico.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the high-court opinion that reversed a lower-court ruling in favor of the man, Vijayakumar Thuraissigiam, who was placed in expedited removal proceedings that prohibit people who fail initial interviews from asking federal courts for much help.
Immigration officials handled Thuraissigiam’s case as a part of process Congress created “for weeding out patently meritless claims and expeditiously removing the aliens making such claims from the country,” Alito wrote.
He noted that more than three-quarters of people who sought to claim asylum in the past five years passed their initial screening and qualified for full-blown review.
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